Mallak Azaria wrote:Psichotic wrote:dexington wrote:Eve is not modeled on some middle age romantic notion of honor and valor, where gallant knights duel in hopes of winning the heart of the princess. In real life if you are about to get into a bar fight, and the other guy tells you that he think you should go outside and finish it. You really should stay inside, chances are he just wants to get you in a situation where he and his friends will have the advantage of numbers.
That is how eve is.
Somewhere in the middle is a realistic balance, and it is achieved quite well in most video games, to the mutual benefit of the players and the publishers.
EVE is not
most video games & is not supposed to be fair, to the mutual benefit of it's players & the publishers.
Perhaps not, but it is supposed to be profitable, and the fact is Eve has a few hundred thousand accounts (300K???) in a 6 billion dollar market. CCP is a business. It is competing with other businesses. It is wise to read the tea leaves of the market and adjust your strategy accordingly. Whatever Eve is supposed to be, whatever you or I or CCP wants it to be, is completely irrelevant to what the
market wants. The
market is what pays for Eve - or doesn't pay for Eve, as the case may be.
So the question is: will more people pay for Eve it is is more fair and more friendly? I think so and I definitely do not think you have to turn it into My Little Pony in order to do so.
This is taken from a paper published by Dept of Computer Science & Enggeering at the University of Minnesota. They recieved funding for the project from the NSF and the Army Research Institute:
Churn Prediction in MMORPGs: A Social Influence Based Approach wrote:Churn is a big problem for the gaming companies as churners impact negatively in the word- of-mouth reports for potential and existing customers leading to further erosion of user base.
Churn is the biggest problem facing established MMORPGs. If CCP wants to reduce its churn rate, I assert they need to take a good look at what their competitors are doing and see if they can replicate some of their success by adjusting their products, marketing, goals and corporate culture. According to researchers in the aforementioned study driving your customers away has the secondary adverse consequence of creating a bad name for yourself. I do not see that taken into account in their corporate culture or game design. If CCP wants to realize its true potential - which would result in solidifying the financial futures of its employees and allowing capital to be directed towards future projects - they need to make major changes in order to reduce churn. The first of which being making Eve a place people want to play in despite the fact they do not share the current customer base's proclivities. Eve has some thousands of systems, and I see no reason the entirety of Eve has to be directed at only one type of player. If miners want a section, there should be a place for miners. If traders want a section there should be a place for traders. It makes business sense and I cannot understand why CCP hasn't realized that.
I don't expect most of the people reading this forum to agree. By definition you are non-churners. It is not you CCP needs to worry about retaining, it is the people walking away because they don't like being griefed or the game is too hard or expensive. If CCP is happy limping along, and apparently to many that is either acceptable or they believe its the best they can do, they should continue to do what they have been doing.
Bottom line:
I believe that if they want better results they need to change more than game mechanics or improve the technology,they need to change their entire attitude towards their customer base. I could be wrong, but I'm probably not.